March 31, 2026 |
Past the electric blue front door of artist, set and spatial designer Ibby Njoya’s new home off Peckham’s Old Kent Road is a beautiful, blackened wood floor that massages your feet. Inspired by a BBQ restaurant he visited in Kyoto, latticed grooves are carved out of its surface, so as you walk, the criss-cross pattern presses into the tired soles of your feet like a flattened massage roller.
As he hands me a tea in a textured, ceramic mug with a pretty teal glaze, Njoya tells me he actually made the floor himself. “My knees were rough from burning each section [to get its dark colour],” he says with a laugh. “If you want something good, you have to be patient.”
Throughout our conversation, I learn nuggets of wisdom like this are pretty common for Njoya, whose boundless creativity and enthusiasm for craft have allowed him to build a career making fantastical, colour-drenched sets and artworks for the likes of Hermès, Dior, Jaguar, the V&A and countless respected publications.
from left: jacket by BALMAIN, trousers by BODE, shoes by GUCCI and shorts by WOOYOUNGMI
Born in the city of Foumban in western Cameroon, the creative explains that he feels his artistic sensibilities are a common feature among people of his heritage. “The Foumban people are makers… You grow up with people just making stuff, figuring out how to express themselves artistically [and it stays with you].” The same goes for his attraction to colour, another key feature of Njoya’s home and work. “When you go to Africa, there’s an abundance of colour,” he says. “That gives you a feeling of not being afraid to use it.”
Indeed, in his career to date, Njoya has been anything but afraid. It’s a fearlessness, he says, inherited from his fashionable single mother, who was never scared “to have this innate power [and] always push, no matter what the challenges”.
As a result, Njoya has been able to scale his practice up year on year without losing his bold aesthetic and infinitely imaginative approach. “My work started very flat in format because we were doing a lot of backdrops. The aim has always been to create an environment, but now, we’re not just creating an environment – we’re creating a story.”
from left: trousers by MAISON MARGIELA and top, trousers and shoes by HERMES
One such example is his 2023 installation with Hermès, Brides de Galaxy. A celebration of the Brides de Gala silk scarf print and the creative freedom signalled by its consistent reimagination, Njoya transformed a West London film studio into an immersive, alien planet-cum-clubby cosmos, equipped with hanging disco balls, volcanic domes and technicoloured lighting that would move Joseph to tears. Another is Njoya’s project with Jaguar in 2024, The Theory of Colour. In it, a vast set featuring curved walls sprayed with fuchsia, fiery orange and blood red, which towered above heads and wove around a plush landscape of indigo carpet, told the story of the vitality and spirit at the heart of the carmaker’s ethos.
Relocating to South London as a child, Njoya began his artistic practice aged 16 by studying visual arts and design at the Brit School – a famed institution that boasts alumni like Adele and Raye. After that, he headed further down south to Arts University Bournemouth to study illustration, where he attended a lecture by set designer Rhea Thierstein, a former employee of Academy Award-winning production designer Shona Heath. After reaching out to Thierstein and assisting her on a few shoots, Njoya relocated back to London and started to assist others. Most notable was Thomas Bird, a prolific set designer whose clients include Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Chloé, and who became Njoya’s mentor for the next four years.
“Getting into set design was hard at first because there weren’t a lot of people who looked like me in the industry,” Njoya says. “What inspired me most was people who showed me that this was a space I could exist in like IB Kamara, Rafael [Pavarotti] and Campbell Addy. They showed me that we can tell our stories.”
from left: top by BOTTEGA VENETA, glasses (from top) by RAY-BAN, LEXXOLA and CAMPBELL ADDY X AHLEM and jacket, top and trousers by DSQUARED2
After learning the tricks of the trade from his time with Bird, Njoya cracked on. “I didn’t want to wait for people or for a magazine to give me purpose. So I started setting up shoots myself. I’d be the set designer, lighting assistant, photographer, stylist – everything. If I wanted something done, I had to do it myself.” He started reaching out to those who inspired him and Addy, Kamara and Pavarotti quickly became close friends.
From then on, he really flexed his creative muscles. With this crack team of collaborators and a photoshoot playlist stuffed with amapiano, Brazilian funk and Shatta (dancehall-inspired music from the French Caribbean), Njoya started working and never looked back. But for him, it hardly feels like work.
He reels off a series of fond memories, his joy hardly containable as he divulges the first time he, Kamara and Pavarotti all worked together. His painted backdrop was so large it couldn’t fit through the door, forcing them to hoist it into the fourth-floor studio through its widest window. Or the time Kamara left a shoot to grab a coffee and came back with a broken chair he found on the street, before sticking it to a model’s hair (the theme was flipping colonialism on its head). “That moment made me realise the level of creation isn’t bound to what you have in front of you,” Njoya says. “You can experiment.”
from left: jacket by BALMAIN, trousers by BODE, shoes by GUCCI and jacket, trousers and shoes by ISSEY MIYAKE, glasses by CAMPBELL ADDY X AHLEM
These relationships have influenced Njoya well beyond work. Spending most of his spare time travelling, Njoya is regularly posted in Pavarotti’s native Brazil, a country he discovered through their friendship. He is also fascinated by the vastness of China and spends a lot of time in Shanghai, with Indonesia and Japan not far behind.
Although it seems Njoya is never truly off the clock. “The more places you go, the more you expand the possibility of inspiration. You see differences in artisanal making, materials, all of that,” Njoya says, before telling me about Zhou Xue Ming, a Shanghai-based hair artist with whom he recently collaborated to create a “Grand Canyon headpiece out of hair”.
The discussion of such a whimsical piece leads us to Njoya’s personal style. Throughout our conversation he’s been wearing a knitted hat in the shape of a teddy bear that I’ve been admiring. Asking where it’s from, he tells me he gets them custom-made in Amsterdam, proclaiming he’s “a big fan of fun hats”. And indeed, he is. In the looks selected for this feature, the hats included imitate a fluffy fox, a lilac cat and a six-eyed, fire-engine-red alien, among others. Explaining that he looks at his personal style as a mixture of “things [he] finds fascinating,” Njoya continues, “It’s a collection of ideas, inspirations, things that might not work together for someone else, but they work for me.”
from left: glasses by CAMPBELL ADDY X AHLEM, shirt talent’s own and jumper by JORDANLUCA
The house is an extension of this. Sitting next to us, for example, is a hefty tomato-coloured vase with swirling indentations that Njoya picked up in a flea market. His living room features a gilded rocking horse with cascading bead detailing he built with his team and a wall-filling, block-coloured painting of a man with his arm bent above his head titled C’est Pas Possible (translation: That’s Not Possible) that Njoya also did himself. In fact, his archive of fantastical objects is peppered all over the house, including the retro-futuristic, cello-shaped sculpture and packing peanut/ clown head baseball bat featured in this shoot, which he also made. The chicken made of bottle caps that appeared earlier? Picked up in a flea market.
The space itself, and how the artist holds himself inside and outside of it, lifts a mirror up to his insatiable thirst to both create and stay creative. It’s this relentlessness that has made him such an attractive collaborator. His relationship with Hermès began in 2023 when the house tapped him to create an installation for its well-regarded shop windows. Titled Cave of Wonders, Njoya’s window featured protruding, perspex shards shooting up from a Mars-like landscape and cavernous rocky facades, with an assortment of Hermès accessories suspended from its ceiling or peeking out from hollowed cavities.
“They loved the design and the concept, and about a year later they came back and said, ‘Okay, you gave us a taster – now we want you to create the universe,’” Njoya says. This was the seed that bloomed into Brides de Galaxy. “The Hermès team were incredible. They guided us, pushed us and encouraged us to go further. Sometimes they’d say, ‘This idea is great, but it’s not wild enough – push it.’ And you’re like, ‘Okay, let’s go crazy’. Working with the house is honestly a blessing,” he continues. “They work in a craft-first way. It’s always about making the best thing and making it right, and understanding that good things take time.” In January of this year, Njoya was able to honour that craftsmanship once more, creating another window display, L’appel du large, venture within, for the house’s New Bond Street store, which featured an enchanting, fairytale-like tree and jumping horse, woven entirely by skilled female artisans across the UK.
jacket, shirt and trousers by DIOR
It’s striking that despite Njoya’s professional success and extensive industry knowledge, he seems to relish the idea of being a perpetual student. When asked about the moments in his career he is most proud of, he can’t name just one, instead opting to reflect on how surprised he feels every time he and his team successfully undergo the “crazy” projects they work on. “Every time, I’m shocked by the level of learning and the amount of information we absorb,” he says. And when it comes to the future, Njoya is raring to absorb as much new knowledge as possible. “I hope people keep challenging us. That’s what keeps it exciting.”
Taken from 10 Men Issue 63 – Classic, Craft, Nostalgia – out NOW. Order your copy here.
IBBY NJOYA: COLOURFUL LIFE
Photographer SULEIKA MUELLER
Fashion Editor and Talent IBBY NJOYA
Text BELLA KOOPMAN
Photographer’s assistant JAKE MILSOM
Fashion assistant ELLA O’GORMAN
Production AISHA AHAMED and SONYA MAZURYK
Special thanks to ISABELLA GILDING
Hats throughout talent’s own
